Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open Publication No. 2009-223414 (Patent Document 1) describes a method of matching a design image generated by CAD at a semiconductor design time with a photographic image obtained by taking a photograph of a semiconductor during its manufacturing by an electron microscope, and accurately reviewing a degree of the similarity again for a matched candidate position. In Patent Document 1, the review is performed by deforming the photographic image in accordance with the design image and evaluating the similarity degree for the deformed image.
As a specific processing procedure described in the embodiment of Patent Document 1, effective means for a type which is limited to some extent as a type of the photographic image are described.